So Peter is not actually in danger of getting deported but some of our neighbors are. Help me raise $$$ that will sponsor our immigration clients!

Hi Friends,

So Peter is not actually in danger of getting deported but some of our neighbors are. That’s really important to me.

When I was a child, I witnessed my mom scrambling to renew her green card. I couldn’t understand the stress she was under. At that moment, she explained the ugliest word in the English language: deportation. Deportation meant that my mother would be taken away from me and my young siblings. Thankfully, she secured her green card in time.

To see the stress on her face and her difficulty navigating the immigration system has stayed with me. It was then that I realized the importance of having a lawyer in your corner to guide you.

I started working to help immigrants in college and have continually found myself drawn to the work. Presently, I get to help people in my own neighborhood navigate the immigration process alongside my awesome team at Open Door Legal who will represent them, no matter what their background.

At the end of the day, I go home and know that a family is better off because we are in their corner. I am constantly inspired by the work that we do. I want to invite you to make an impact with me. Together we can build a safer community for people who live with the threat of deportation.

Will you help me raise $5,000 to provide legal representation for Open Door Legal’s immigration clients?

Philip Green

Belinda Liu

Sil Liapis

Elder Law Attorney

(415) 610-5991
sil@opendoorlegal.org

Hannah Wischnia

Engagement Associate

(415) 906-0578
hannah@opendoorlegal.org

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Our Story

Our organization started when we realized that it was in fact possible to ensure universal access to civil representation for everyone. For years, we had watched existing legal aid nonprofits turn away more people than they helped. We had seen the government grossly underfund legal aid and attach ever-more restrictions on who could be helped. We had witnessed the private sector invest atrociously little of its accumulated wealth into legal aid.

The result of this is predictable: legal aid has become the least resourced social need in the United States. Most low and moderate-income Americans can’t get help, and as a result can’t properly enforce their rights.

We realized that by combining program innovations, new strategies for generating earned income, and a focus on fundraising from the general public we could create a system that solved this massive problem and guaranteed access to legal representation for everyone in a community, on every issue.

We decided to prototype this system in Bayview/Hunters Point because it was the only high-need neighborhood of San Francisco without a legal aid office in the neighborhood. In late 2012 we raised about $8,000 in seed funding from some generous private donors and decided to put our theories to the test.

We opened our doors on January 7th, 2013. In our first year, our core staff worked tirelessly on minimum wage to deliver services to dozens of clients. The heating in the office didn’t work, the furniture was rotten, and we couldn’t afford a receptionist. We had to scrounge office supplies and equipment from people we knew.

But we proved that our model could work. We never turned away someone for services who lived in the local community, and by rigorously tracking our outcomes we were able to get more and more support from people that hadn’t funded legal aid before. We tripled our budget between our first and second year and tripled it again in our third year.

We’ve come a long way since the days when we had to hand shred everything because we couldn’t afford a shredder. We’re excited by what the future can bring and look forward to growing our model out to encompass more and more people.

Our Board of Directors

We are proud to have a diverse board featuring local residents and professionals from a variety of different industries. The board is in charge of implementing the member-approved annual budget and overseeing our staff.